Thanks to another of our southern correspondent comes Doug Wilson’s latest sovereignty-of-God brag. He faults Russell Moore for only wanting a Christian public square about race but not about sex:
The theological problem has to do with how we define righteousness for the public square. Russell Moore doesn’t want to build a Christian nation except on racial issues, which is like wanting a nation to be Christian every day between 9:45 am and 11:12 am. If Jesus is Lord of all, we must listen to Him on racial issues in the public square. If He isn’t, then we don’t have to. What we don’t get to do is pick and choose. Under the new covenant there is no unique chosen nation, of course. In the new covenant, every nation must be discipled, and there is no exceptionalism there. But whether you want righteousness in tiny slivers, or righteousness across the board, you still have to define it.
Sorry, Pastor Wilson, but you are picking and choosing all the time. Welcome to the novos ordo seclorum; find your inner 2k self. What is Christ’s will about the military? Read the Old Testament for “holy” war and invade Mexico? What does Christ reveal about idolatry and blasphemy? Send Jews and Muslims packing (the way King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella did)?
Theonomists are all bluff. They don’t virtue-signal. They obedience-signal. Worse, they know they’ll never have to live with their braggadocio.
Old Life 
Like most evangelical commentators on social issues, the Mullah of Moscow’s comments are long on bluster and short on specifics. I’d be a bit more convinced if he would cite a specific instance in which Russell Moore has claimed that our secular government should take specific action on race-related issues and has justified that claim on sectarian grounds. After all, it doesn’t take much creativity to come up with a multitude of non-sectarian reasons as to why the government has an interest in restraining the exercise of racial prejudice in certain contexts (e.g., in places of public accommodation). On the other hand, it would take a fair bit of creativity to come up with any non-sectarian reasons as to why the government ought to be restraining people from entering into certain types of romantic relationships.
Lastly, why do guys like Wilson and Bayly constantly wring their hands over the activities of those they’ve repeatedly deemed to be apostate? the more these guys fuss over Russell Moore and Tim Keller, the more credibility it lends to the latter at the expense of the former. I’d make the same comment here to those who complain about the PCA’s Strategic Plan. If you don’t like it, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Denominations are pragmatically structured organizations that serve little purpose but to facilitate cooperative engagements of like-minded people. If you’d rather be in a different club, go join a different club. And after you’ve joined the different club, move on with your life and stop obsessing over all of the alleged deficiencies of the old club.
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These folk take “teach all nations” (Mt.28:19) in a very different sense that Jesus spoke the words. The original ministerial task to “teach Israel” (Lev.10:11) was so that the individual members of that people would “make mention of the God of Israel,” in truth and in righteousness indeed (!) and not by a false oath of allegiance (cf. Is.48:1,17).
To “teach” reasonably bears the same sense in Mt.28:19 for the NT era as for the OT; with this important qualifier: rather than the narrow command to help Israelites become Israelites (see Rom.9:6), now the King sends his servants into all the world to help Greeks, Arabs, Ethiopians and Saxons become true Israelites, Ps.87:4-6.
When a collectivist interpretation is foisted on Mt.28:19, the sense is reconfigured as if it was a call to national bodies as a whole to convene as at Sinai, and make new promises they cannot keep, neither they nor the sons they bind to their oath. This has actually been tried a couple times in history; and it has a form of godliness though lacking the power thereof.
It is doubtless better for a nation-as-a-whole for there to be lots of believers savoring the body, staving off the inevitable decay. And they don’t have to be running the organs of state, or promising like modern fixers to deliver the next election to President Jesus, in order for it to be well observed: they have and are discipling their earthly nation. Well done, good and faithful servants.
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Bruce,
Well said. There’s no better testament to social conservatism than people voluntarily living together within the community of the church in a manner consistent with the practices they espouse. Even so, most of my secular colleagues are much more happily married than the couples I meet at a typical evangelical church. When I visit PCA or OPC churches, I often feel like people are trying to conform to a role, and don’t seem to feel that comfortable with it. By contrast, my white-collar colleagues marry on terms much more analogous to those espoused by Gary Becker, and come off as much more happy with their estate in life.
That’s also why I suspect that same-sex marriage will go nowhere. I just don’t observe too many such marriages where the parties seem happy with the arrangement. By my observation, most non-heterosexual people fare far better emotionally in opposite-sex coupling arrangements. Sure, their relationships may not conform to the Bayly-Wilson-TGC notion of a marriage centered around male sexual domination. But they work. And one doesn’t even need a Viagra prescription to prove to oneself that your “biblical masculinity” isn’t everything you think it to be.
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“it would take a fair bit of creativity to come up with any non-sectarian reasons as to why the government ought to be restraining people from entering into certain types of romantic relationships.” Except of course the homosexuality is inherently unhealthy in terms of long-term physical consequences. Does the government have non-sectarian reasons to discourage smoking?
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